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Guide to making money
Money is used in World of Warcraft for a variety of purposes. You need it to upgrade your class and profession skills, you can use it to buy consumables, equipment, ingredients and recipes from vendors and at the Auction House (sometimes abbreviated AH in this guide), and it comes in handy when you need to get from place to place on the animal airlines (Flight Paths). The number one thing that most players want money for is to get a mount at level 40. This guide is dedicated to getting you that first for your riding skill and first mount (factoring in the discount for being honored with your faction). Basics This guide will only cover the basics of making money. Many players have "secret" strategies for making money that they wouldn't want to put in a public info site, since it gives them their edge in the marketplace. If you can gain the trust of a successful WoW tycoon, you should ask them some of their techniques. One piece of advice that players should follow before starting new WoW characters is to choose the proper server. Lower population servers generally have lower prices in the AH, and less demand for items. This is good news if you already have enough money, as things are cheaper, but for poorer players (with gathering skills), a more populated server will garner you more money for what you gather and sell. Saving The most important step in saving up for your mount should be self-evident: saving. You can burn through thousands of gold before level forty if you visit the auction house for new equipment at every opportunity. The improper use of your production trade skills can cost a small fortune. Before engaging in a crafting profession under level 40, read a suitable leveling guide in order to gain whatever skill level you desire for the least amount of money. Keep in mind that, typically, equipment you produce will be slightly worse than equipment otherwise obtainable at your level. Equipment The most important part of saving is to never buy equipment unless you're positive that it will increase your earning potential. This means that virtually all armor is right out the window. A common mistake is to invest in headgear and neckwear at the earliest available levels. While it might seem foolish to leave an available slot empty, you will eventually find something to fill it. In the mean time, the or more you save will serve you well. The only equipment purchases that can be justified at times are weapons. Since an improved weapon can greatly increase the speed at which you kill enemies and thus gain their loot, weapons are often a worthwhile pickup. Still, try to find deals. Look several levels above and below your own for bargains. Don't buy weapons that you won't hold onto for at least 5 levels. It should go without saying that you should never purchase any equipment from vendors; always use the auction house. And don't always use the buyout. Some of the best deals come from bidding. The two best ways to get good equipment for your level are: *find quests with rewards that will be useful to you. If you can get yourself in a good guild, or team up with some higher level players in group quests, you can often get higher level quest equipment that you couldn't get on your own. *Use the Looking for Group interface, or join a good guild, and do instances that are around your level. You'll learn valuable grouping skills, and the level of loot in an instance is typically much better than what you could find on your own. If possible, concentrate on instances with humanoid mobs, since cloth is one of the best trade resources. I find it a good idea to add those players who are capable and friendly in instances to my friends list, and to do more instances with them as you level up together. Training There are a lot of skills and spells you can train as you progress, and not all of them are useful. As a mage, do you really think you need to invest into the first two ranks of Amplify Magic? Are you still using Heroic Strike at level 32 as a warrior? Think long and hard about how valuable each skill is before splurging on them. This goes doubly for trade skills. If you are dead set on getting a production trade skill instead of two of the more valuable gathering ones, remember that not everything your trainer offers is worth buying. While it might be nice to have a long list of shirts and dresses to produce as a tailor, they offer very little in the way of revenue. Also keep in mind that, generally, whatever items you make at lower levels will not likely sell for more money than you could have made by simply selling the materials you used to make them. For this reason, two gathering skills are recommended. Spending Auction House The Auction House (AH) is a brilliant way of making money if you know the tricks on how to do it. The trick with the AH is to buy things cheap and to sell them high, or even better to get Items from drops then sell them on the Auction House. Some of the best things that can be sold in the auction house are special items or "Pets" that can only be found in certain areas. For example, the Savory Deviate Delight recipe can only be found in Horde areas, and for this reason sells really really well on the Alliance AHs. Here are some tips to always remember when your using the Auction House: Buying *Always check each of the prices of the item, and look over a spread of several days. This is not so major on small items but anything that you are spending hundreds of gold on you need to check prices carefully. It is also a good idea to check a website such as Allakhazam, Goblin Workshop, or Wowhead to see what an item normally sells for. *Make sure you have an idea of how much you should be spending on an item. The best bet is to ask other players who already have this item, or ask members of your guild. This can prevent you getting ripped off. Selling *Check the prices of other auctions of the same item as yours, make sure that you are not pricing way above the others; the best bet is to aim higher if you know it will sell before it expires, or at the same price or lower if there is lots of competition. *Know the price of your items and how much they are worth; make sure you check this as the more accurate the price, the more sales you will get. *Be patient. If you are trying to sell an item for a large amount of money you might have to post it for several days in a row, or post it then wait a week and post it again. To close, I wish you luck with your Auction House buying and selling. If you can improve your AH skills, it is an exceptional way to make tons of money; however, if you are inexperienced, it can be a serious money drain. Auctioneer Auctioneer is an addon for WoW that assists players in the auction house by automatically gathering price information and displaying statistical information about prices: *The auction house window is augmented with additional functionality to search current auctions for cheap deals and buyouts *Using the BottomScanner module of Auctioneer, it is possible to have an alert displayed when an unusually cheap item is listed in the AH -- the item can then be bought for resale or disenchanting *Several convenience functions for searching, listing items and displaying past transactions have been added *All statistical data, and some additional information such as vendor prices, the stack size for an item, and what trade skills it is used in is displayed in an extension to the standard item tooltip in-game. Many players find Auctioneer to be an invaluable addition to WoW with regards to trading on the auction house. This is true especially for inexperienced players who can't correctly judge the value of an item yet. Also, since Auctioneer uses data collected on the specific realm the player is on, it is more reliable with regards to the current market situation than databases such as Allakhazam and Thottbot, which base their pricing information on global market data. Gadgetzan (Neutral) Auction House The Gadgetzan Auction House is useful for making money, as commodities that Alliance players can get easily can be sold to a cheap price to Horde players (or vice versa), and then sold at a higher price at a major city. Vendors Although you usually don't want to buy items to sell from vendor, some items can be sold for much more than you pay for them from the vendor. Keep an eye out for these types of items. A key example of this is the Gnomish Lighthouse vendor in Azshara, who sells the Deepdive Helmet Schematic for 36s. Only one may be purchased at a time, but many Engineers will pay upwards of 1g for this schematic. Some players even turn this into their profession by systematically "plundering" vendors in the game world and then selling the items on the auction house at a significant markup. The reason why this works (even for items which are on unlimited supply at vendors) is, that many players don't want to spend time travelling to specific vendors to get hold of a recipe or skill book. They rather pay a slightly higher price at their local auction house. In some sense, they use the auction house as a "super market" or "convenience store". So it is completely reasonable and legitimate to be the supplier for this concenience store and make money out of it. This scheme works particularly well with items such as *skill books to gain access to higher levels of professions such as First Aid *all kinds of recipes (cooking, alchemy, etc.) *more or less rare items that can only be found at certain vendors (eg. Strong Fishing Pole) Revenue Streams World of Warcraft offers a lot of ways to make money. Begging Everyone hates beggars. Don't do it. It can hurt your reputation in the marketplace. If you don't care about etiquette, you can make a small amount of money this way, but it isn't as efficient as the regular (and respectable) ways of making money. It will also get you on ignore lists, fast. Dancing Believe it or not, some characters make money from tips they get while dancing (see /dance under Slash Commands). This usually only works if you have a Human, Night Elf, or Blood Elf female and have unequipped everything (stripped down to your underwear). Like begging, this practice can irritate people and hurt your reputation. It isn't as bad a breach of etiquette, but like begging, the returns are not that great. Dueling This is a harder way to make money but it might work in Ironforge, Ogrimmar, etc. Start by telling a lvl 30-35 that if he beats you in a duel you will give him 30 gold but if you beat him he has to give you 4 gold. This is a slow way of making money (and often the other player won't cough up the money anyway) but I've heard of people getting upwards of 50g over several days in Ironforge. Enchanting Selling enchants can make some money, but usually only when you have very high level (over 225) enchants and only the most sought after ones (weapon enchants and large attribute bonus enchants), so it isn't really recommended as a good early money making source. Disenchanting If you farm lots of magical items you can't sell, you can convert them to valuable ingredients that other enchanters will buy (usually at the Auction House). It can often be lucrative to check the auction house for green items with unpopular suffixes, such as "of the Gorilla," with low starting bids. These items usually disenchant into the same ingredients as equal items with more desireable attributes and can be had for a bargain price in comparison. The ingredients obtained from disenchanting these items are often worth more than you'll pay for the item itself in the auction house. Depending on the market situation on your server, you can turn disenchanting into your main method of earning gold. Especially on developed, "end-game" realms, the demand for enchanting materials is very high, as many players tend to have a lot of money they want to put into improving their gear by getting expensive enchants. Also, typically there are many high level enchanters on these realms, so the materials sell quickly. It is not unlikely that almost any green item in this case will sell for a lot less than the materials it disenchants into. If you find this is the case for your realm, either get Enchanting as a profession or make a dedicated character to work as your disenchanter. The Enchantrix addon helps you with deciding if an item is worth disenchanting. Lockpicking Rogues can make some money by picking locks for people and getting tips. Not a great revenue source, but a decent one to supplement multiple strategies for making money. Generally, the usual lockpicking tip is between 10 silver to 1 gold, the most common being 50 silver. Sometimes, you can get lucky and have someone tip up to 5 gold for lockpicking several (or even just one) boxes. It's always beneficial for a rogue spending time doing repairing, training, etc. in a city to put up a lockpicking advertisement on the trade channel. Just make sure you let the buyers decide the price and that your lockpicking level is high enough. Run Throughs If you can solo an instance, SQUEEZE EVERY LAST DIDDLY COPPER OUT OF IT!!! ... or you could offer to run people through it for a price. Some people get so desperate to run a certain instance for whatever reason, be it rep, be it specific loot, whatever the reason, you can turn that desperation into a tidy profit. Loot Magical Items Magical items are almost always worth something to vendors, but should generally be saved and sold at the auction house. Vendor Trash Any item with a grey name is considered Vendor Trash or Poor quality. White items are used in Tradeskills or as spell reagents, so you may want to check some web sites (as listed above in the AH section) to see if they're worth more than the vendor price. Keep your eyes out for regular quality weapons, as even the worst of these tend to sell for several silver. Also, white (or even grey) shoulder armor under level 20 sells regularly on the auction house, mainly because there is nothing better available at that level. Unless low quality items have some known quest use or are coveted by other players, you should try to sell it as soon as possible to create bag space. ALWAYS (or almost always, see above exceptions) keep things like cloth, leather, herbs, or large stacks of white/gray items over other loot when you have to decide what to keep when your bags get full. It might be worth your while to invest in larger bags (8-10 slot), especially if you know a tailor. Auctioneer, mentioned above, is useful for maximising profit gained from vendor trash - it augments the tooltip for each item with details on that item's vendor sell price (as well as auction value, if it has been seen at auction), thus allowing you to decide what to throw and what to keep. AutoProfit is a particularly handy addon if you regularly bring home several bags' worth of trash all mixed in with the rest of your inventory - it allows you to sell all gray items to the vendor with a single click. Quests Nearly all quests offer cash or items as a reward, and often both. While completing quests shouldn't be your main form of wealth generation, it is something you are going to do anyway. The key to making the most of quests is picking your reward items wisely. Don't always pick the item that most fits your class - if it isn't demonstrably better than your current item, instead go for whatever reward sells for the greatest amount to the vendor. You can use Thottbot to check each item's value individually, download a UI mod such as Auctioneer to display it in the tooltip, or you can follow the general guidelines for equipment value laid out later in this guide. Twink Items Many players who already have higher level characters create alts that they level to a certain point and then stop. Often, these twinks are level 18-19, 28-29, 38-39, etc. for the purpose of going to battlegrounds at the top of their tiers and kicking butt. Since these twinked characters are owned by higher level players with lots of cash, they usually outfit them with the best gear available at their level. Thus, items that require level 17-19, level 27-29, or any other items around this level, with good stats or dps, often sell for much higher prices than they normally would. This is especially true on an older server. Trade Skills (Professions) Gathering Mining and skinning are good money professions. From the moment you can smelt copper, you can make good money selling stacks of the bars in the auction house - although you should make sure to check the relative prices of ore versus bars before smelting, since depending on the server economy and the time of week, low level ores may sell for up to double the price of the equivalent bars. As your skill increases, so does your earning potential. The only gathering profession that can come close to the miner in raw earning potential is the skinner. A skinner starts by collecting relatively worthless ruined leather scraps, but soon moves on to light leather, which can be sold for a good profit. Higher grades of leather yield higher profits, just as higher grades of metal are more valuable. A skinner/miner has potent earning power through the auction house, but often runs out of inventory space. Herbalism is also a good source of money. Unlike ore which is found only in rocky areas, herbs can be found in many places, depending on the exact plant. The more the gather, the better you can predict where to look for it. Be sure to check on the auction house for what herbs are in demand for a high value; often a lower level one is very valuable, so you can farm an area you already know for quick money. Production/Crafting Usually, you'll want to produce Uncommon or better quality items to sell. Look in the Auction House for items that sell for good prices, but don't have many of people selling them, which usually drives down the price. Common item recipes to look for: *Blacksmithing ** Plans: Iron Shield Spike (drop) ** Plans: Steel Weapon Chain (drop) ** Plans: Iron Counterweight (drop) These items sell well for decent money, even though they are common quality items. Beware, these recipes can be pricey if you buy them, so try to get a bargain and ask around to see if you are getting a good price. Sometimes you can make money by making items with ingredients supplied by other players who give you a tip to make the item for them. Not a reliable source at low levels, but a good supplemental income source at higher levels with good recipes. Blacksmiths: watch the prices for "Needed by" items such as the metal rods used by enchanters, and compare the price for the raw materials. For example, a Golden Rod requires * 1 Gold Bar * 4 Coarse Stone There's a good chance you can buy the raw materials for 25% - 75% of the going rate of the finished item, or mine them for free. The fee for an 8 hour auction is only 1 silver, so you can afford to re-auction rods that don't sell the first time. Conclusion Although there is no "silver bullet" that will make you rich with no effort of your own (apart from illegal methods such as bot farming), new players should focus on the following. It will work for anyone, require no boring grinding sessions and generally offers a high reward-to-time ratio: *Your first profession should be Mining -- get it at level 5 and start using it right away. The only equipment you need is a Mining Pick, and they are sold at General Goods Vendors for a few copper. *Another viable profession choice is Skinning -- it only requires a skinning knife, it doesn't require tracking, and it's very easy to incorporate into your levelling. *Check the market situation on your server. If it is a long running server, possibly enchanting materials such as Strange Dust and Magic Essences will be very expensive (for example, a typical price of or more for one Lesser Magic Essence is a strong sign that your realm has a healthy enchanting market; also get suspicious if players keep asking for high level enchants on the public chat channels, as usually this means the server has a high demand for enchanting materials). You should seriously consider getting Enchanting as your second profession in this case -- mainly to disenchant anything you find and sell the materials you get from it. This has the second major advantage of being able to turn useless quests rewards (which are soulbound) into a lot of gold right from the beginning. You can also disenchant any old gear you're not using anymore, instead of having to vendor it. *If the server is new, possibly Skinning will yield better rewards than disenchanting in general, so go with this as your second profession. *I generally don't recommend Herbalism, since Mining and Skinning yield more gold. If you plan on becoming an Alchemist later, however, Herbalism is an option (and it should replace Skinning in this case). *Don't, and I repeat, DON'T get any of the crafting professions in the beginning. Save this for later, possibly after level 40 when you have bought your first mount. Drop one of the gathering professions then and learn the crafting profession of your preference. None of the crafting professions offers significant profit margins at low levels, so it's generally a lot better to sell the raw materials (ore, bars and skins) instead. *Install and learn the Auctioneer addon and use it to your advantage in the Auction House. When you have saved around (and you will quickly, due to having Mining), you can start investing money and selling your investments at a profit. *Don't spend any money on gear, except for the most essential items such as a Greater Magic Wand for priests, for example. If you follow this basic advice you should have no problem at paying for the mount at level 40, and you will always be able to afford skill training, food and potions along the way. Category:Newbies Category:Guides